The disclosure is directed to methods for laser processing optical fibers and fiber optic connectors. More specifically, the disclosure is directed to methods for laser processing optical fibers arranged in arrays and splicing connectors having a dense array of optical fibers.
Optical fiber is increasingly being used for a variety of applications, including but not limited to broadband voice, video, and data transmission. As bandwidth demands increase there is an unresolved need for high fiber count fiber optic connectors and methods for making the same. Moreover, the high fiber count fiber optic connectors become increasingly difficult to make as the fiber count increases since the number of fibers that must be aligned increases. In other words, the relatively small cores of the array of optical fibers must be aligned with suitable transmission loss levels for all the fibers of the array.